Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, WA

Contact Information

Phone: (509) 247-1212

DSN: 657-1212

Named after the honored World War 1 aviator, General Muir Fairchild, FAB or Fairchild Air Base is located in Washington. The exact location is in Spokane. Where the cities around the area were high in competition, Spokane was chosen for the air base for intelligent reasons. There were better weather conditions and was protected by the range of mountains. This mountain range minimized the vulnerability to plausible Japanese attack. The distance from the coast, (480 km) was another prominent factor. Luckily, many businessmen in Spokane contributed heavily to buy the area for building the air depot.

When established first in 1942, it was known as the Gelena Field. It was then renamed as Spokane Air Depot in March; in July it was renamed again: Spokane army airfield being its new name. In 1948, the Spokane Army Airfield became Spokane air force base, and finally in November 1950, it was named Fairchild Air Base.

Prominent Contribution

Fairchild air base has been a great help in all missions of the United States, be it war or humanitarian efforts. One of its missions is air fueling. After the September 11 attacks, it constantly provided air refueling and alert operations as a part of the war on terror operation Nobel Eagle.

Air Refueling Wing

Fairchild Air Base has been the largest air refueling body in the US Air Force. During the war in Vietnam, air refueling became a high demand. At this point Fairchild Air Base made a great contribution to the young Tiger project. A number of combat aircraft was refueled by Fairchild air case.

Furthermore, the air-refueling wing of the Fairchild air base has great records of humanitarian services and SAR projects. Since 2001, the Fairchild air base has a record of saving lives by responding to 50 calls, on average every year, for assistance. Since it was established, the unit has saved more than 600 lives.

Besides its technical contributions and active participations in US missions and operations, the Fairchild air base is important because the extent of medical care available around it. So, in the time of emergency during an operation, the injured are transported to Fairchild Air Base since they can get high quality medical care and trauma rehabilitation in the major hospitals like, Sacred Heart, around it.

Washington at a point had a distinguished number of nuclear resources. Many of these nuclear warheads were stored at the Fairchild child air base. These bombs which included more than 85 nuclear gravity bombs were removed from Fairchild air base in 1990, and a treaty was signed not to introduce such bombs ever again.